Is one hotel bathroom big enough for personalities as outsized as Harvey Fierstein and Bella Abzug? The playwright’s Bella Bella, opening tonight at the Manhattan Theatre Club’s Off Bro…
The forever hatted Abzug was a fierce, lifelong fighter for women’s rights and righteous causes who became New York’s voice in Congress through much of the 1970s. Witty, combative, beloved, hated, feared and revered, Abzug was a major figure on the city and national political scenes through much of that decade, her failures as notable as her victories.takes place on the eve of one of those rare failures: An unsuccessful bid in 1976 for the the Democratic nomination to U.S. Senate.
Fierstein tells her story in a way that will be familiar from various one-person shows, particularly Jay Presson Allen’s form-settingfrom 1989. Allen had Truman Capote trapped in his United Nations Plaza apartment awaiting the fallout from a just-published scandal-mongering magazine piece, while Fierstein ensconces Abzug in the bathroom of the New York Summit Hotel as she awaits the election results from that final Senate race.
Fierstein, dressed in a man’s black shirt and pants – that red hat, the sole nod to Abzug’s own look, is doffed within seconds of Fierstein’s entrance – speaks directly to the audience in a non-stop monologue of history lesson, confession, braggadocio, name-dropping, joking and intimacy. Much of the monologue seems in Abzug’s own words, for better or worse. Zingers that once zinged, no matter how true they still ring, can now seem like dialogue for a ’70s-era Norman Lear comedy. When Abzug says “A woman’s place is in the house,” at least some in the audience will know – and others should guess – that the punchline will be “of Representatives.
And if there’s a comfort-food element to Abzug’s compassionate, common-sense humanism, the same can be said of the man onstage. With the exception of adopting Abzug’s Yiddish accent, Fierstein is as much Harvey as Bella, blustering, shouting, emoting and capping many a rant with the sheepish smile that dates back at least toEndearing? As always. Rehearsed? Absolutely. Fierstein knows just how to speak to his audience, even if he has to talk over Bella Abzug to do it.
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